Business profitability can be increased through Internet marketing. When you use the Internet to market a product or business, you are getting exposure to potential customers around the globe. The success of your marketing efforts is crucial to the overall success of your business. This article includes tips that should help you.

Strategically placed user polls can help you to get a better idea of how your users feel about different parts of the website. If you use the results you will be able to tell what your users want to see, and allow them to be involved in the decision making process.

Real-time leads are necessary if you are looking to increase sales. They provide instant access to potential customers who want to learn more about your products or services. There is no delay in the time they filled out the information to the time you contact them, which results in a greater chance of you converting the lead into a sale.

A great way to get customer feedback is to allow them to put ratings and reviews on your website. Having this sort of feedback on your page can not only give you ideas on how to improve your product or service, but also gives customers an overview of what they can expect from the product.

When beginning your internet marketing adventure, think small and manageable when it comes to your website. Having too many indexed pages such as a million or more can cause a search engine to pass by your site, in favor of one that has around ten thousand or twenty thousand.

Always make sure you have a slogan and a logo for your business, even if you’re just running a small, Internet based firm. These tools are going to assist with building brand recognition. Likewise, an appealing motto makes a strong, subconscious impression. When a customer makes up his mind to buy a particular product, the slogan will pop into his or her head, creating a sale for you.

Offer repeat customers the option to subscribe to a product or service. This is not only convenient for them but translates to guaranteed sales for you.

Try and implement links to your website for every possible signature. If you post on forums, your website’s URL should be in your signature. Include your link in every business email you send out. By doing this you will be passively promoting your website every time you communicate with someone online. Additionally, you will also be building quality backlinks to your website which can have a positive affect on your website’s SERP ranking. Above the link, type a captivating line that encourages them to click on the link.

Just about any advertisement for products or services can be improved by adding descriptive terminology that promotes how quickly the client will receive gratification after placing the order. Tell your customers about how quickly your items can reach them, how short the order process is, or when they will start to see results. Perhaps you can highlight quick download capabilities, safe checkouts and rapid online order confirmation.

When promoting a small business via internet marketing, pay attention to detail and the content you are providing your customers. Aim to achieve unique and valuable content on your website. You need to keep good information on your site so that people can stay updated.

Now you know considerably more than you did about internet marketing strategies. All you have to do now is try them, and find out if they are successful for you. You may well find that you need to modify how you operate. The most important thing is to always be open to learning and trying new things.

Now that Facebook has bought facial recognition vendor Face.com, many users are worried that the giant social network will use the technology to infringe on their privacy. While you can’t stop Facebook from grabbing the facial-recognition data, there are ways to limit the service’s use of that information.

Security vendor Sophos has posted step-by-step instructions on how to prevent Facebook from using that facial-recognition data to suggest to other users that they tag their pictures with your name.

While Facebook users can’t stop the company from gathering the information, the privacy settings in their accounts lets them pull in the reins and take some control over which photos bear their names.

“This doesn’t mean that Facebook won’t learn about what you look like and associate it with your likes and friendships,” writes Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant at Sophos, in the company’s blog. “But it does mean you can opt out of Facebook using the data it has collected on your appearance,”
Simple Steps

The steps are fairly straightforward.

Simply go to “timeline and tagging” in the privacy settings, click on “edit settings” and then select “no one” on the option “who sees tag suggestions when photos that look like you are uploaded.” Press “OK,” and you are done.

This opt out procedure reflects Facebook’s general approach when it comes to privacy. Users typically have to opt out of sharing personal information, as opposed to being asked beforehand. By comparison, Google+ asks users for permission before applying facial-recognition technology.

Facebook had been using the Israeli startup’s technology for some time, but the buyout was announced Monday. Actually owning Face.com is expected to lead Facebook to more deeply integrate the technology into its services.
The Increasing Importance of Pictures

For Facebook, a picture seems to be worth far more than a thousand words. Before its initial public offering in May, Facebook told potential investors in regulatory filings that photos were expected to add value to the company.

The Face.com acquistion is only the latest attempt to make the most of how they are used on the site. Two months ago, Facebook paid $1 billion for Instagram, a service for easily sharing photos by mobile phone.

But just because Facebook thinks pictures are important doesn’t necessarily mean that you have to let it do anything it wants with your image. You own your face, Facebook doesn’t.

How Your Passwords Are Stored on the Internet (and When Your Password Strength Doesn’t Matter)

Between LinkedIn, Zappos, Dreamhost, and other prominent sites recently hacked, you’ve likely been thinking about your online security lately. But what does it actually mean when one of these sites get hacked, and how can you protect yourself? Here’s how your passwords are stored on the internet, and what it means for you when a web site you used is breached.

There are a number of ways a site can store your password, and some are considerably more secure than others. Here’s a quick rundown of the most popular methods, and what they mean for the security of your data.

Method One: Plain Text Passwords

How It Works: The simplest way a site can store your password is in plain text. That means somewhere on a their server, there exists a database with your username and password in it in a human-readable form (that is, if your password is testing123, it is stored in the database as testing123). When you enter your credentials on the site, it checks them against the database to see if they match. This is the worst possible method, in security terms, and most reputable web sites do not store passwords in plain text. If someone hacks this database, everyone’s password is immediately compromised.

Does My Strong Password Matter? No way. No matter how long or strong your password may be, if it’s stored in plain text and the site gets hacked, your password is easily accessible to anyone, no work required. It still matters in terms of hiding your passwords from, say, your friends, or others that could easily guess it, but it won’t make any difference if the site gets hacked.

Method Two: Basic Password Encryption

How It Works: To add more protection to your password than plain text provides, most sites encrypt your password before they store it on their servers. Encryption, for those of you that don’t know, uses a special key to turn your password into a random string of text. If a hacker were to get hold of this random string of text, they wouldn’t be able to log into your account unless they also had the key, which they could then use to decrypt it.

The problem is, the key is often stored on the very same server that the passwords are, so if the servers get hacked, a hacker doesn’t have to do much work to decrypt all the passwords, which means this method is still wildly insecure.

Does My Strong Password Matter? No. Since it’s easy to decrypt the password database with a key, your strong password won’t make a difference here either. Again: this is in terms of the site getting hacked; if you have a nosy friend or family member rooting through your stuff, a strong password can help keep them from guessing it.

Method Three: Hashed Passwords

How It Works: Hashed is similar to encryption in the sense that it turns your password into a long string of letters and numbers to keep it hidden. However, unlike encryption, hashing is a one way street: If you have the hash, you can’t run the algorithm backwards to get the original password. This means a hacker would have to obtain the hashes and then try a number of different password combinations to see which ones worked.

However, there is a downside to this method. While a hacker can’t decode a hash back to the original password, they can try many different passwords until one matches the hash they have. Computers can do this very fast, and with the help of something called rainbow tables—which is essentially a list of trillions of different hashes and their matching passwords—they can just look up the hash to see if it’s already been discovered. Try typing e38ad214943daad1d64c102faec29de4afe9da3d into Google. You’ll quickly find that it’s the SHA-1 hash for “password1″. For more information on how rainbow tables work, check out this article by coding guru Jeff Atwood on the subject.

Does My Strong Password Matter? In this case, yes. Rainbow tables are made up of passwords that have already been tested against hashes, which means the really weak ones will be cracked very quickly. Their biggest weakness, however, isn’t complexity, but length. You’re better off using a very long password (like XKCD’s famous “correct horse battery staple”) rather than a short, complex one (like kj$fsDl#).

Method Four: Hashed Passwords with a Dash of Salt

How It Works: Salting a hash means adding a random string of characters—called a “salt”—to the beginning or end of your password before hashing it. It uses a different salt for each password, and even if the salts are stored on the same servers, it will make it very hard to find those salted hashes in the rainbow tables, since each one is long, complex, and unique. LinkedIn is famous for not using salted hashes, which brought them under a lot of scrutiny after their recent hack—had they used salts, their users would have been safer.

Does My Strong Password Matter? Certainly! Unfortunately, however, we’ve reached a point where computers are so fast that many are able to brute force even salted hashes. It can take a very long time—certainly longer than using rainbow tables—but it’s still doable. This means the strength of your password still matters, since the longer and more complex it is, the longer it will take to crack in a brute force attack.

Method Five: Slow Hashes

How It Works: Right now, most security experts are pointing to slower hashes as the best option for storing passwords. Hash functions like MD5, SHA-1, and SHA-256 are relatively fast: if you type in a password, it will return the results fairly quickly. In a brute force attack, time is the most important factor. By using a slower hash—like the bcrypt algorithm—brute force attacks take much, much longer, since each password takes more time to compute.

Does My Strong Password Matter? Again, since strong passwords are harder to brute force, a strong password can definitely help you out here. If your password is strong, it could take a very, very long time to discover with a slow hash.

How Can You Avoid Having Your Password Leaked?

So what does all this mean for you? Here is what you should take away from this information:

Don’t use services with bad security. While you can’t control how a company stores your password, you can control what services you sign up for. You should never sign up for a service that uses plain text or encryption to store your passwords, because they’re much more vulnerable to being compromised. A good way to find out what they use, according to web service CloudFare, is to click the “lost password” link. If it sends you your password in an email, that means they can access the password itself and it isn’t hashed—and it’s likely stored using one of the less secure methods. Of course, you can always email them and ask, or check their FAQ to see if they’ve volunteered that information.

Use a strong password: As we’ve shown you above, the stronger your password is, the less likely it is that someone will be able to crack it and use it quickly. Length is more important than complexity. Remember: any password is crackable, you just want it to take as long as possible. Which brings me to our last point:

Always change your password after a breach: Even if your password is strong, that doesn’t mean it’s invulnerable to cracking—it just means that it’s likely to take very, very long. Those with weak passwords may have already had their account compromised by the time they realize the leak has happened, but if your password takes days to crack, you have time to change it and make your old password useless by the time they figure it out.

Use a different password for every site: If you use a different password for every account you have, then those accounts will stay safe even if one of your online accounts gets compromised. If you were to use the same password for every site, one site’s breach can mean a whole world of trouble for you.

Use OAuth if you’re unsure about a site’s security: We’ve talked about OAuth before, the protocol that lets you log in using your Google, Facebook, or Twitter account. If you don’t know how secure a site is, and it offers you the option of using OAuth, go for it—Google, Facebook, and Twitter are likely to have better security, and if the site is breached, you can just revoke its access to your Google, Facebook or Twitter account.

Utilizing the proper Internet marketing techniques means good promotion for your company. Internet marketing puts you in direct contact with millions of potential consumers. This article outlines how you can benefit from Internet marketing, as well as some smart ways to do so.

Put a signature link in all of your emails, even personal emails. In many ways, your e-mail signature is like a business card, so write a memorable signature that you would be happy to share with everyone on the Internet. Your website will enjoy greater revenue and greater traffic thanks to this practice.

Mixing business with pleasure is generally a bad idea, but it doesn’t necessarily always have to be. Because you are in it together, this venture does not create the same stress you feel when you owe someone else money. Get involved with your spouse, and try to do this together.

Links will be more visible if your website has an easy to use look. This will give your viewers an easier time as they view your site.

Remember that every profile you open should be regularly updated, so only take on as many websites as you can handle. When you see a stagnant profile, it is seen as spam.

You may want to offer your customer incentives to increase immediate sales. You could offer discounted shipping or a free gift for ordering by a certain date. Many sites offer free shipping to a limited number of early customers. This induces people to make a purchase quickly because of a perceived discount.

This following article offers advice and information regarding internet marketing. When it comes to your landing page for visitors, always ensure that your objective is crystal clear. This page is all about selling the product. It should be obvious to the viewer what it is that you are selling as soon as they arrive on the landing page! If it is hard to find your product, your visitor is likely to leave disappointed.

Customer follow ups are important. Promote reviews for your products that customers can write and post to your website.

You must know your competition if you are to succeed with an online business. Find areas for improvement by scouring the sites of other businesses in your industry. Differentiate your website by highlighting products or services that are not available on others.

Regular blogging can have a large impact on marketing. Blogging allows you a forum in which your customers can be informed about various products. Having a blog also makes your site larger, which gives search engines more material to index and should thus bring you more traffic.

Start off your internet marketing efforts on the small side. A search engine might overlook a site with too many indexed pages; while limiting your indexed pages could make you more visible with regards to the search engines.

Offer subscription services for your most popular products. Offer them a plan where if they agree to sign up for a subscription to receive additional supplies periodically, they will receive a small amount off the normal single unit price.

While internet marketing shares some similarities with other disciplines, it does have its own set of principles and nuances. One example is search engines might stop using title tags in their algorithms. If this is the case, you may have to put more effort in video marketing to a viral audience.

These are the ways in which Internet marketing helps you communicate well with your potential customers. If you already have a basic understanding of Internet marketing, you can look for ways to improve your current strategy. If you follow the guidelines from this article, you will be making the next step to a more successful business.

Alexa Ranking has always been something to cheer about in the world of Blogging. As you might know there is no definite ranking system on the web and Alexa does a pretty good job in their own ways to rank websites on the Internet.

Many would like to argue about the accuracy of Alexa Ranking and say that it is not something to rely upon. Being a blogger myself I expect at least 1 person a week to shoot me a question regarding Alexa. And guess what, they do every single time and I try to explain how things work in the world of Blogging.

What is Alexa Ranking?

Alexa is an Amazon.com company which ranks websites on the Internet according to a system of their own. The way it works is very simple, Alexa accumulates data from all over the Internet via their Alexa toolbar which is installed in millions of computers in the world. So by understanding the users behavior they rank websites on various metrics.

Should I care about Alexa Ranking?

Yes, you should if you are in an environment similar to what I am. Being a blogger is all about displaying the reach of your website on the Internet and getting more visitors on your website. Apart from the traffic stats you can always show off your Alexa ranking if it is really good. It is not difficult to achieve Alexa ranking, I will list out few basic things that can get your site under 100k easily!

Is Alexa Ranking accurate?

It is accurate according to Alexa.com standards but not with the Global standards. Simply because not every computer on this planet has Alexa toolbar in it. So the data accumulated by Alexa is very minimal but at the same time it is quite effective because it is mainly installed by Bloggers, Webmasters and Internet enthusiasts.

Did you know: My Site NPXP.com achieved 100k ranking in just 47 days from its launch date?

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How Do I improve Alexa Ranking?

I am sure if you have been reading this article this far then you must also be interested in reducing your websites or blogs Alexa ranking. Just follow these simple steps below and I will guarantee better Alexa ranking under 3 weeks!

6) Get more visitors on your blog especially from the Blogging community because there is a good chance that they have Alexa toolbar already installed.

7) Exchange links with other relevant sites to that of yours which had good Alexa ranking.

8 ) Do not use bots or any other automated methods because you can lose rankings easily if Alexa ever finds out!

I guess I have helped you understand how Alexa works and how you can increase alexa ranking on the Internet. It is not like Google Pagerank, it is completely a different ranking system with different metrics. So follow the steps that I have mentioned and improve your site’s existence on the WEB!This is a Guest Post written by Kamal Hasa from NPXP.com, a Webmaster Blog with updates for Bloggers, Social media and other awesome stuffs. You can also check out his other website Daily Techiefor constant tech updates!

You can read the original post by Kamal Hasa from NPXP.com here…..Click Here